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The lank skipper, in a frock-coat, and the big mate with heavy moustaches, judged her almost too pretty for a Britisher, and wondered at the man on board laying his topsail to the mast for no reason that they could see. The big ship's sails fanned her along, flapping in the light air, and when the brig was last seen far astern she had still her mainyard aback as if waiting for someone.
"Ease down the helm!" he cried to the two men, who were now necessary at the wheel, while the fore-tack was boarded, the lee braces hauled aft, and the mainyard braced in, when the ship was brought up to the wind, bowing and scraping, and taking in tons of water over the fo'c's'le, in this operation, that washed everybody off their legs in the waist, bundling them away to leeward in a bunch.
'We had also upon our mainyard an apparition of a little fier by night, which seamen do call Castor and Pollux.
"Aft here, some hands," I cried, "and lay the mainyard aback. Let go the port main-braces!" The captain came running toward me. "By the living God!" I cried in a fury, grasping the heavy brass belaying-pin, "if you come within a foot of me, Captain Coxon, I'll dash your brains out!" My attitude, my enraged face and menacing gesture, produced the desired effect.
After fighting us for about an hour she bore up for the land, we sticking close to her and meaning to board; but at two o'clock our mizzen topmast was shot away, and falling athwart of our mainyard prevented us from bracing about.
And the next instant I heard the same voice shouting, in Spanish, an order for the crew to lay aft and back the mainyard.
The captain's and second mate's boats, meanwhile, were seeking the school, which had risen and was swimming away from the ship. As soon as the wrecked boat was run up to the davits, the mate swung the mainyard and got under way, following the other boats.
But oh, it was weary work to attempt to turn to windward in a light breeze in the deep, bluff-bowed, squat-sterned, Dutch-built Haarlem, after my experience of the smart, lively, swift-sailing British frigate; it was, therefore, with a feeling of the utmost satisfaction that shortly before the end of the second dog-watch I heard the Europa once more booming out her summons to surrender, and saw the mainyard of the Schelde swing slowly aback in response.
Under these unhappy conditions the "Macedonian" reached within half musket-shot, which was scarcely the ideal close action of the day; but by that time she had lost her mizzen-topmast, mainyard, and maintopsail, most of her standing rigging was shot away, the lower masts badly wounded, and almost all her carronade battery, the principal reliance for close action, was disabled.
This done, Captain Martin swung his mainyard and made sail, and we followed suit as quickly as we could. Then I worked out my observations, pricked off the ship's position on the chart, wrote up the log, and took possession of the late captain's stateroom, by which time dinner was on the cabin table, and I sat down to my first meal on board the Mercury.
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